> Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to.
Governments have guns, Google does not. I'm not saying we should ignore corporate surveillance but there is a big difference.
Governments have guns, Google does not. I'm not saying we should ignore corporate surveillance but there is a big difference.
That's a misleading analogy. Problem is that Google/ebay/Microsoft/Silicon Valley cooperate closely with the law enforcement and employ a lot of former LEO people who still have close connections with law enforcement.
Check out some of the Yasha Levine's articles. He's one of the best investigative journalists when it comes to SiliconValley and surveillance.
For example, he's writing a book, Surveillance Valley, precisely on this topic. Check out this short blurb that debunks this notion about Google not policing people:
http://pando.com/2015/02/23/support-yasha-levines-surveillan...
>Reveal how Silicon Valley polices our lives: There is a common misconception that no matter how much Silicon Valley companies spy on us, at least they don’t have the power to arrest and jail us. Truth is, they can and do. This book will investigate how the most progressive Internet companies — including eBay, Facebook and Google — engage in pro-active policing. For example: eBay’s massive private police alone has overseen thousands of arrests and convictions around the globe, and hands over complete criminal cases to government prosecutors “on a silver platter.”
Anyway, truth is a lot darker.
No. It's not misleading at all. And your example illustrates the important distinction the OP made. These companies that you mentioned almost have to cooperate with the government because the government has the ultimate power to fine or even jail them, not to mention harass them or put them out of business, if they refuse to cooperate. They can't just walk away from this issue. This is why government power and the use of the gun has to be strictly controlled by the constitution. This is what the FEDs, et. al. are trying to circumvent. Our basic liberties such as Freedom of Speech, Assembly, etc. are empty words if the government attains the power to spy on all citizens en masse without out cause or warrant.
Check out Eric Schmidt's ties with government:
http://www.naturalnews.com/051687_Google_Eric_Schmidt_Hillar...
Article: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11255633
The article is sowing some serious FUD. Everything is engaged in behavior modification. That's the basic point of products and services. Watch more/better/less/no TV. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Stand up at work. Reward yourself with a candy bar/bottle of wine/vacation.
I don't know. I'm not sold on fearing Google. The government I do fear.
Another worry is that through subtle manipulation of search result ordering, page load delays, news feed filtering, etc., Facebook, Google, et al. could influence politics and culture in counterproductive ways, even if only by algorithmic accident.
Your second point is in conflict with the first. If they want me to consume as much as possible, they have to show me what I want. If they want to influence broad culture they have to show me what they want me to see. If it is by algorithmic accident, then its like all cultural devlopment. Its all accidents, nobody planes the evolution of culuture, google, facebook and reddit have already changed culture and will continue to do so.
You points are a small worry, compared to something like the prospect of 1984.
Gandhi would disagree with you.
The weakness of hard power is that it is expensive, blatant in application, and virtually guaranteed to create opposition. The strength of soft power is that it is indirect while being cheaper and less likely to create resentment. People are best manipulated through suggestion rather than coercion.
Hard power is ugly but at least it's obvious. Soft power can be just as ugly by being insidious.
Gandhi had the extreme luck that WW1 and WW2 were happening effectively totally changing British culture, British power and so much more.
Soft power can be ugly and insidious but I still vastly prefer to deal with that then with a guy taking a baseball bat to my knie. If the worst problem liberals have to fight is the Google sort algorithm and the amazon recommendation engine then we are in a pretty good position.
True, but that would not stop Google from tracking you everywhere, via more than a dozen tracking systems.
Also, even if you don't use Gmail, Google may still have about half of your emails, maybe more.... https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...
Because any of those suggestions, all of which you seem to imply by your statement I would take issue with. The last being the most important.
The platitudes suggesting anything a corporation does, no matter how powerful, is okay since it can't employ physical force, while anything the government does is wrong because it can are excellent fodder to trick children into accepting Libertarianism but are otherwise mostly ineffective.
"children" uses ad hominem attacks. Force is great when the force is directed against dissenting views, but not so cool when your views are in the minority.
Look up the concepts of (de facto) monopolies, network effects, and externalities.
That depends on what you mean by that. I think most people care very much about the long-term effects that lack of privacy has on societies. They just are uninformed and therefore don't see those future costs, which is why they make a flawed tradeoff against their own interests.
> My core argument is that you still have a choice with free markets but with goverment if your views aren't the majority you are at the whims of group think.
So, if everyone is on facebook, what choice do you have in reaching an audience? If google started manipulating the opinions of the majority of society against your interests, what choice would you have? ...
Who is educating these people? organization who have an interest in keeping the masses ignorant to the effects of privacy.
>which is why they make a flawed tradeoff against their own interests.
this is a common argument it hear, do you not think it is elitist to think that you know better then the common people? Hell, maybe you do, but I bet 10,000 other people also think they know better too. I am going to trust 100 billion micro decisions everyday rather then some academic in an ivory tower who thinks they know the will of the people.
>if everyone is on facebook, what choice do you have in reaching an audience?
Come on, There are many more channels to reach your audience, you are on one right now. Hacker new knows nothing about me other then my username and password.
>If google started manipulating the opinions of the majority of society against your interests, what choice would you have?
duckduckgo, bing, reddit, facebook, TV, or Family people get create their opinions based on a huge number of inputs. The problem is that people want to be told they are right so they only consume things that reinforce their opinion (confirmation bias) but that is a whole other road.
What is your point? That people don't ever act against their own interest because of lack of information or understanding?
> Come on, There are many more channels to reach your audience, you are on one right now.
That wasn't the question. The question referred to a hypothetical situation. Stating that the hypothetical situation doesn't match reality doesn't answer the question.
> Hacker new knows nothing about me other then my username and password.
And your IP address and which comment threads you are interested in and which opinions you express and which comments you vote on in which way ... but I guess that's besides the point anyway.
> duckduckgo, bing, reddit, facebook, TV, or Family people get create their opinions based on a huge number of inputs. The problem is that people want to be told they are right so they only consume things that reinforce their opinion (confirmation bias) but that is a whole other road.
How is that a choice you have regarding other people being manipulated against your interests? I don't understand.
You don't know what they value most, only they do.
>That wasn't the question.
True, to much hypotheticals
>And your IP address and which comment threads you are interested in and which opinions you express and which comments you vote on in which way ... but I guess that's besides the point anyway.
Your right about that, but if I cover my tracks I give a lot less data then say a Facebook.
>How is that a choice you have regarding other people being manipulated against your interests?
You don't and you never will. People have been manipulating others since the the dawn of humanity. My point is that if people have choice they can take in many inputs and decide the best way to make decisions for themselves instead of being forced to use a service.
But you very well can find out that people commonly proclaim inconsistent values, and that they often regret decisions they made earlier, and that that often coincides with having had inconsistent values.
It's just an empirical fact that if you look at how happy people (claim they) are, for example, people living in police states tend to be less happy than people living in free(ish) societies, while at the same time you still find many people who are very pro law-and-order. Now, I am not telling them whether they should prefer a police state or a free society, I just can empirically observe that people show support for politics that empirically leads to a society that the same people also empirically dislike.
Anyway, it's a thoughtful essay. But I'm a simple person, and I tend to prefer action to contemplation. Interfering with corporate surveillance starts with simple steps. You block tracking and ads. You harden browsers against fingerprinting. You use operating systems that respect your privacy. You compartmentalize your online activity enough that surveillance won't hurt you, using multiple devices and VMs, that connect via VPN services and Tor.
It's not simple, I admit. But it can be a fun game. For me, anyway. Most people still don't seem to care enough to bother. And I don't know what it would take to change that. So it goes.
It's harder than you suggest, because all that you propose helps little with some big elephants in the room:
https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/oct/06/faceb...
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/14/iphone-address-book/
Basically, people have to start telling other people that they are jerks for letting big corporations mine their most private conversations just to save $1 or $2 dollars per month. Obviously, this won't happen.
It may be possible to use iOS anonymously. I have an anonymous Apple online account, and could presumably use it with used devices purchased for cash. Anyone know if that's doable?
Did you read the linked articles? The problem is that others use Google Mail and Facebook, so your e-mail/contact information end up at Google Mail/Facebook anyway.
The analysis of Benjamin Mako Hill shows this very aptly. Although he runs his own mail server, Google delivered 57% of the e-mails that he replied to. So, even though he does not use Google Mail at all, Google can scan/profile/whatever over half his e-mails.
However, I use other personas. I've had on the order of 100 email addresses, over the years. Most all now abandoned, of course. And I suspect that many of my correspondents have similar practices. That's not so easy to profile.
Is google doing the same? Most likely.
Is it reliable? Less clear, given the Google ads page that show what Google thinks it knows about you is often mistaken on age and gender. Perhaps it's more reliable singling out an individual than an age.
What Google ads page?
When it was doing the rounds a couple of years back plenty of people were commenting how often it got age and gender wrong. Sometimes it was widly inaccurate on interests too.
That's simply not true; they use the government's guns every time they file a lawsuit. While the government is the ultimate controller of that power, the economic and legal powers available to corporations depend on the enforcement of the state.
If the state simply does not have the ability to attack a country on the other side of the world, then no amount of bribing politicians can make it happen. When the state does not have backdoors into everything, their is no amount of political pressure that can make the state misuse that power.
I want to limit government power because they have the monopoly of force. Everything that Google is doing threw the government has to go threw the governments monopoly of force. We need to control the monopoly of force by the rule of law on the level of individual freedom.
The wrong way to go about it is to have a super powerful state that can easily regulate every aspect of what Google and co are doing and can tell them what to do because that is essentially Fascism.
The important part for me it is to create up to date laws - and enforce them - that protect citizens for mass surveillance, public or private, while allowing for useful use of data like for making easier to file taxes or to store your personal contacts.
If we as the sovereign of democracies can be influenced massively, I can imagine that at least in tipping-point situations.
There is a lot of money in wars too, so even without state-level actors paying, motivation is not unthinkable.
The point still stands, if you can create a state that does not have waste powers in the first place, then neither the state by itself, nor a cooperation can use that power.
Claims like: you asked for it, it's your own fault, and on and on.
You know you're full of shit.
You're part of that same group of people who say: America, love it or leave it. You have the option to speak English or get the fuck out.
It's like hearing someone tell me that I can vote nuclear weapons out of existence. Like I can solve all my problems with my own little boycott! Oh really?
I've opted into mandatory JavaScript support, and opaque, minified JS which is required for so many sites to even work (cross-origin policies aside), and I can stop server-side exchanges of behavioral data, and I can just walk away from everything happening around me, and live in a cave, and I can opt into being a luddite instead?
I suppose I opted into the planes that fly overhead too. My omission of any actions against air traffic represent my token assent to having tons of aluminum circling overhead 24 hours a day. Right?
You know very well that their analytics product tracks everybody all across the Web (and techies are the only ones who know about noscript). And what do you do when you are forced to reply to Gmail emails because others who have no clue use it?
Joe the user has no clue about "all this technical stuff", how it works, what it is capable of, how it can be combined with data from other DBs, how it is really used by the corporate and governmental world and where all this is going, especially when AI will have advanced even more.